Why?
by dafney64
Summary: Olivia is at a Medical conference when she runs into Fitz's father. It's a different take on Fitz and Olivia and how they came together.
1. Chapter 1

**Sorry folks got a little to quick off the gun. Will update this a little later.**


	2. Why

**Hello Everyone. Sorry that I published before I got my thoughts down on paper. I just had an idea and I wanted to get it down before it got away. Here is what I thought and I hope you like it. This will be a one shot. This belongs to Shonda Rhimes.**

* * *

Olivia had come to Tuscon for a Medical conference she was speaking at on Pediatric Cardiology. She was an expert in the field and a featured lecturer on a new surgical technique. She was done with her lecture and was standing around answering questions and taking in congratulations from her colleagues, when a gentleman walked up and something very familiar about the man struck her. He waited until it was just them when he introduced herself.

"Hi Livie. I know it's been a long time, but I used to live next door to you back in the old neighborhood in New York. You used to call me Mr. Grant. I'm Fitzgerald Grant."

The look of shock and grief swelled up in her face as she remembers the last time she saw Jerry Grant as everyone knew him. It took her a moment to composer herself before she spoke.

"I remember you, but I'm afraid you became much like the boogie man to all of us in the neighborhood. How you could just walk away from a family and never come back."

Jerry dropped his head with shame as he knew what he had done had filtered through the neighborhood.

"You do know that he's here don't you? Is this why you would talk to me first or is this a coincidence?"

"I was hoping he would be here. I kept up with him throughout the years, but I don't know what happened to his mother and sister."

"I think that is for him to tell you. He's upstairs now with our daughter. I want you to see him, because you left a path of destruction in your wake when you left. He never knew why, so I'm taking you upstairs and you are going to take everything he has to say or do to you, because you deserve it and I need him to get to forgiveness. He holds a piece of himself from us because of you. So put on your big boy pants and lets go."

* * *

Upstairs in their hotel suite Fitz was laying on the bed playing with their daughter Ava. Tickling her and talking to her as she babbled back at him. She was five months old and had the cutest blond colored curls to match her light caramel skin with the most intoxicating green eyes on a human being.

Fitz heard the door close and then Olivia call out to them.

"Fitz?"

"In here babe. Ava wanted to play a bit after I bathe her and put on her onesie. Guess which one she has on?" As he walked through the door into their living room.

He looked up to see his wife and out of the corner of his eye he caught movement. He refocused on who it was and stopped and nearly dropped Ava as he recognized who it was. Olivia rushed over to grab Ava out of Fitz's hands, and also make sure he didn't do anything rash.

Fitz felt a coldness rise up from his feet to his head as he looked at the man who nearly destroyed him and his family.

Ava was happy to see her mother as she babbled and laughed at nearly being dropped. Olivia put her hand on her husbands cheek to make him look her in the eyes. She was frightened by what she found. She quickly grabbed Fitz's hand and brought him back to the bedroom. She walked him over to the bed and made him sit down. She put Ava back in his arms so that he could snap out of the zombie like mood he was in. She slowly turned his face to look him in his eyes. She was not happy with what she found there, but she had to make him hear her out. So she spoke with as much urgency as she could.

"Babe. I know this is a complete shock to you, but I need you to go out there and get the answers you've always said you wanted. I brought him up here for your peace of mind and not his. He owes you an explanation of why he left you all. Why didn't he come back, and you need to let him know what kind of damage he did to you and your family."

Fitz looked in her eyes and shook his head as he looked down at Ava and tears fell looking at his beautiful baby. How could he ever leave her and never look back, he needed to know what kind of person would do that and if that was in him. Was he anything like his father? He needed to know.

"Come with me. I don't think I can do this by myself."

Olivia shook her head and hugged him and kissed him on his lips.

"Of course I'll be there for you. We both will. When you feel you are losing it, just look at us and we will calm you."

Olivia got a blanket and Ava's binky. It was her nap time, and she could sleep through anything. She reached down and brushed her hand over her husbands cheek before pulling him off the bed by his hand.

* * *

Jerry had waited until his son could pull himself together. He knew showing up out of the blue would throw his son for a loop, but he had to do it. He had to stop being a coward. They deserved to know the truth of his absence all of it.

The door opened and Jerry finally got a look at his granddaughter. She was perfect, if you could describe a baby like that. She looked at him and smiled and reached for him. He wanted so badly to hold her, but he was unsure of his son's reaction to the baby being so friendly.

"Go ahead, she likes to meet new people. For some God awful reason she thinks your ok." Fitz said.

Jerry took his words with the blow they were meant to be. He pulled Ava into his arms and smiled at the little face that smiled and laughed as Jerry did the same to her. He couldn't help himself.

He finally gathered himself and sat down with the baby still in his lap. Olivia gave him the blanket and her binky. Once he got her settled he looked into his son's face and saw rage leaking off his body. But he knew it was time to go into the lions den with him.

"Ask me what you want son."

"Don't you ever call me your son again in this life time. Being a father is a privilege you gave up over twenty years ago!"

"I'm sorry Fitzgerald, I will answer any questions you have."

"Why? Why did you leave your wife of fifteen years and your nine year old son and seven year old daughter?"

Jerry took a breath and began.

"Because I was selfish and bored and the first chance I got, or the first woman that gave me the attention I thought I needed, I took it."

Fitz shook his head no so violently and jumped off the couch and started to pace behind it. If he got any closer to his father he just might punch his lights out. Taking the ques of how upset her husband was, Olivia went over and took a sleeping Ava from Jerry and told Fitz to wait until she came back from laying her down in her portable crib.

Fitz stopped his pacing abruptly to ask another question.

"So, I'm assuming from what you said things didn't work out with this other woman. So why didn't you at least come back to check on us?"

"I did two years later, but there was someone else living in the house and they didn't know what happened to you all, and the Pope's had moved too. So, I just went back to California and started to live my life as it is now. I would troll through the newspapers online to find out what happened to you, but I only caught glimpses of what you had done with your life like graduating number one in your class, getting into Harvard, and graduating top of your class at John Hopkins Medical. I never found out what happened to your mother or your sister."

Fitz jumped over the couch and had Jerry by the throat as he started to yell.

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD! DO YOU REALLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO US IN THOSE TWO YEARS?"

Olivia came rushing back into the living room and made him let go of Jerry.

"Fitz, you need to calm down baby, I know this is too much, but he has to know everything and you have to be the one to tell him. Look and me, lets just breath together for one minute. Please!"

Fitz loosened his grip on his father and look into his wife's eyes and began to breath and let go of some of the tension he was holding onto.

"Ok, lets sit down and tell him everything."

Fitz shook his head and sat down.

"Well you son of a bitch! The first three months after you left with that piss poor note you left, Mom wouldn't get out of bed. So I had to grow up real fast. I would make our lunches and try to comb Karen hair to get us to school on time. We were doing alright until people started to notice our appearance and how unkempt we looked. I told Olivia what was happening and I made her promise not to tell her parents, but the school called Family and Children services and when they came to the house to remove us, Olivia told her parents what was going on and they took Karen and I in."

"What happened to your mother?"

"She spent the next four years in a mental institution. She went so deep inside herself that she didn't have anything left for us . Your fucked up note make her feel less than nothing. She functions, but she's not the same person. Olivia and I take care of her needs now. Ava being born brought back some spark but not much."

Jerry felt his stomach churning at Fitz's description of what happened to his wife, but he needed to ask one more question.

"Where is Karen now? How is she doing?"

That question seemed to shift the tension in the room even more than it already had been. Until that question he had not looked at Fitz or Olivia's faces because he was to ashamed, but when they did not respond, he felt bile moving up his stomach to his throat.

Fitz couldn't answer because he was sobbing now. So Olivia spoke.

"Karen killed herself two years after you left. You know how much of a Daddy's girl she was, and how sweet of a soul she was, she cried herself to sleep for a year asking for you and with her mother being gone, it was all she could take. The light in her eyes just went out that week leading up to her killing herself. We had gone out to Fitz's soccer game, but Karen said she felt sick and needed to stay home, so my Mom stayed with her. She told her she would go and take a nap. She went to check on her and she had hung herself in her closet with one of your ties. We moved the next month."

Jerry jumped up to find some place to throw up. He made it to the sink in the kitchen and retched until he couldn't anymore. After he threw water on his face, he went back to stand in front of his chair he was sitting in.

"Sorry doesn't even cover what I've done to all of you. I have to live with what I've done. I was a stupid spineless coward who couldn't do the most simplest of things for my family. It was always about me and what I wanted. Look at me Fitz. You don't have anything to bare anymore, it was all me never you, or your mother, or Karen. Do you want to know anything else?"

Fitz managed to ask his final question.

"Why now, why seek me out now?"

"I owed you all an explanation. I didn't want to die not telling you everything."

He held back a sob before he continued.

"I also came to ask for your forgiveness."

Fitz was beyond enraged at his admission.

"You think you can come here impose yourself on my wife and daughter and ask for forgiveness after everything you caused?

"He stood up over him and said, "Do you know that I hold a piece of me back from my family because I was so afraid that I would leave them like you. I look and Ava and the way she looks at me and I remember how Karen looked at you that way, and you just threw her away like she was nothing. For what? Some pussy!"

He sits back down by Olivia and just looks at him dumbfounded.

"Fitzgerald...the forgiveness is not for me, it's for you. I can see what I've done to you and I can tell you without reserve that you are nothing like me. I had my doubts about my family the moment I said I do to your mother. I was half way out the door then. What you see as love for your family I saw a burden that I eventually walked away from."

"That's right you bastard! If it hadn't been for Eli Pope showing me what a real man does for his family, I probably would have ended up like you."

"I'm truly glad you had a man to show you how to be a man. My Dad left me when I was ten too. Maybe deep down I thought that's what you do. Thank you for your time, I should be going I have a plane to catch. All I ask from you is to let it go son, I'm not worth your fear. Love your family freely knowing that you've broken the chain."

Jerry gets up and heads out the door without another word.

* * *

Fitz slumps back into the couch and puts his head on the back of it and closes his eyes. Olivia puts her hand on the side of his head and rubbed his head as she watched tears roll down the side of his face. She waited for him to speak.

"All this time I've always kept a part of me from you and now Ava and in the end it was for nothing. The moment your father took me in the curse was broken. I would like to apologize to you for that. You and Ava are my world, I would kill myself before I ever left you two."

He leaned over and sobbed into Olivia neck for the next twenty minutes. When he finally let her go he looked her in her eyes.

"He was right about forgiveness. It was never about him, but always about me. I'm ready to let it all go and be fully present with you and Ava. Lets get our baby girl and go home and have a new start to us."


End file.
